Today’s meeting was called to order by President Dawn and together we sang ‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee’ as our patriotic song. The membership then proceeded to recite the 4-way test.

Collyer offered words of inspiration today, generated from thank-you cards from Strive scholarship recipients that demonstrate our impact on the students themselves and also their family, friends, school and community.  Collyer read from a few very touching notes where students expressed how this financial support helped an autistic student and also a first-generation (first in their family to attend college) low-income student who would not have been able to proceed in school without this support.  

Today’s music, lead by Shelly MacMillan and her backup singers was a cute Mother’s Day song whose lyrics are from the perspective of a child.  

President Dawn and the Club welcomed several visitors and family members today, including a few guests who are UM employees, one daughter and also our Ann Arbor Downtown Development.  Five birthdays were announced – Steven Postema, John Sepp, Phil Klintworth, Shiley Kipp and Matt Boylan- and we offered thank-yous to the helpers of today’s meeting.  

Announcements

President Dawn reminded us of the upcoming Day of Service on May 16, from 9-11am at Riverside Park.  In addition, our recent club survey results are in!  Multiple members were thanked for their help with this project and results will be presented at an upcoming meeting.  

The District Conference was this past weekend in Ontario, Canada where attendees participated in a variety of service projects.  Our own Norma Sarkar was presented with a Ghandi Peace Award – congratulations Norma!  Next year’s conference will be in Frankenmuth.

Norman Herbert provided a thorough overview and recognition of our Ann Arbor Rotary Foundation and Paul Harris Fellows.  Notably, Collyer Smith achieved the status of Rotary Foundation benefactor based on gifts to the RF endowment.  A total of 82 club members made contributions to the Rotary Foundation this past year.  For the AARF, we recognized several members or their estates for various levels of giving, from $1,000 or more to levels of $10,000 and $25,000 or more.  Several Rotarians received their Paul Harris pins as well, for various levels of contributions.  Congratulations to all!

Collyer Smith reminded us of the upcoming 3rd annual Yoga Retreat on June 14th.  The all-day event will take place at the Kensington Hotel.

Greg Stejskal introduced today’s speaker, our own club member and author Steven Postema.  Steve has been a Rotarian since 2005 and recently published a book titled ‘Running Around Town: an Ann Arbor Memoir’.  The book, published in August 2025 is a compilation of short vignettes about his experiences growing up in Ann Arbor in the 1960’s and 1970’s.  The population of Ann Arbor during that time was 66,000 – 100,000, compared to today’s population of over 125,000.  One general message of his stories is the connectedness of the community during that time, when, during a decade, the population of our town grew quickly.  

Steven then read from his book, providing glimpses into several stories of his life as an elementary school student to a high school student.  His style of writing and story telling is quite comical and had us chuckling about the ‘blue hand’ effort in 1964, to ‘situational predicaments’, to first dates, peace sign necklaces and crashing Law School parties!  It was quite fun to listen to his stories and how they relate to our town, embellishing on the concept of connectedness and of people who influenced him growing up.

Our meeting was then adjourned at 1:30pm.